When most people think about Shea butter, they visualize a yellow thick hard butter. This information is incorrect. The yellow butter is actually called African Butter and is from a totally different tree than Shea. The reason for the confusion stems from the marketing technique used by the Westerners and Europeans when the originally began to sell this product. African Butter comes from the nuts of a tree that grows in a dense forest in wet and shaded areas. There is no organic yellow Shea Butter. If you are being sold “Shea” Butter that is yellow and hard, it is African Butter.

African Butter does have similar properties to Shea Butter in that it aides in anti-aging, healing of the skin and conditioning of the hair. Organic Shea Butter is an ivory color, not white. East Africans describe the color as ivory because the tone is similar to that of an elephants tusk. Shea Butter also is much creamier than African Butter. The tree that produces the nuts of Shea Butter grows in the open Savanna. With that being said the trees are in totally different environments hence why the butters would be completely different.

Because of the high demand for “Shea” butter and the wrong marketing techniques used in the beginning some are adding yellow coloring into actual Shea to conform to the buyers idea of what it should look like. However, in adding color and other chemicals to it the natural properties of the Shea has been changed. In return it is being stripped and is no longer as beneficial to the consumer because adding things interfere with the natural abilities of Shea.

So the bottom line is yellow Shea butter is AFRICAN BUTTER and ivory Shea butter is Organic. I am in no means judging people who cannot or do (did, after you read this) not know the difference between the two. In all honestly this is new information to me as well!! I am sharing this new information because I think it will be helpful to everyone. In light of this new information I myself now have to go and purchase some organic creamier ivory Shea Butter.